Press Releases

Today marks the date the United States has busted its annual ecological budget, utilizing more resources and services than U.S. ecosystems can regenerate within the full year. The population of the United States is using twice the renewable natural resources and services that can be regenerated within its borders, according to the report, "State of the States: A New Perspective on the Wealth of Our Nation."

China is the world's largest contributor to annual growth in the demand for ecological resources and services, and has been for the last five years for which data is available, according to Global Footprint Network, a leading expert in natural resource accounting.

Russia ranks fourth in the world among nations with the most biocapacity and is uniquely positioned as the only nation with increasing biocapacity reserves, according to a report released Oct. 13 by WWF-Russia in Moscow. Press Release in Russian

A new study published in Science today and co-authored by Global Footprint Network’s researchers reveals that, despite some progress, more needs to be done to reach an internationally agreed set of biodiversity targets by 2020.

Humanity’s demand on the planet is more than 50 percent larger than what nature can renew, jeopardizing the well-being of humans as well as populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, according to data released today by Global Footprint Network, WWF and the Zoological Society of London.

Today's most vulnerable countries are struggling with both low income (as defined by the World Bank) and biocapacity deficits. They are home to 72 percent of the global population, including two billion people who are not able to meet their most basic needs.

Mirroring national trends of steady resource degradation, the Philippines’ Laguna Lake region now faces a staggering ecological deficit as its population demands natural resources at a rate 30 times faster than what the region can renewably supply, according to a recent report on the resource demand and supply of the region.

Humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year and is now operating in overdraft, according to data from Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank with offices in California, Europe and Japan. Earth Overshoot Day is the approximate date humanity’s annual demand on nature exceeds what Earth can renew in a year. Global Footprint Network tracks humanity’s demand on the planet’s ecological resources (such as food provisions, raw materials and carbon dioxide absorption) — its Ecological Footprint — against nature’s ability to replenish those resources and absorb waste. Global Footprint Network’s data show that, in less than eight months, we have used as much nature as our planet can regenerate this year.

Consideration of environmental risks and natural resource constraints is becoming increasingly important in assessing a nation’s credit risk, according to a new report by the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and Global Footprint Network, in collaboration with leading financial institutions. On November 19, the key findings of the E-RISC: A New Angle on Sovereign Credit Risk report will be unveiled at an interactive event hosted by Bloomberg in London. Bloomberg will also now be offering Global Footprint Network’s country-level natural resource risk data (National Footprint Accounts) on all its terminals. The data will help users integrate natural resource risk into sovereign debt, economic growth and company valuation models.

The UAE ecological footprint dropped to 7.75 hectares per person last year, down from 11.68 hectares in 2006, the Ministry of Environment and Water reported.
The ministry said the decrease was because of improved environmental sustainability, through the country’s adoption of the Ecological Footprint initiative.

Environmental risks are potentially large enough to affect countries’ economies in ways that could influence their willingness or ability to repay sovereign debt. In addition, these risks vary widely across countries, including countries whose current credit ratings suggest similar levels of sovereign risk.

Katsunori Iha, Research Economist, featured in Science Links Japan.
Global Footprint Network announced that “Earth Overshoot Day” this year fell on September 27th, the day when human demand exceeded the regenerative capacity of the natural biosystem in a year. This means that we will maintain “ecological debt” with three months remaining to the end of the year. The indicator used is derived from the Ecological Footprint analysis, a method that is fast gaining attention in recent years. Here, I would like to give an overview of the Ecological Footprint analysis, and the significance of what it analyses, “Earth Overshoot Day”.
Read articles in French; Japanese; Chinese

Alessandro Galli, Global Footprint Network's Senior Scientist, featured in the Commonwealth Ministers article.
In 2002, leaders of the world’s governments, recognising the threat posed by the high rate of species declines,
committed to significantly halting the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Yet, a 2010 study by Dr Stuart Butchart
and others in the journal Science shows that leaders have failed to deliver on these commitments and have instead
overseen alarming declines. In this article the author considers the urgent new initiatives to contain and reverse
these global losses. (more...)

Coverage in Other Languages

"Climate change is about people," Pati Poblete, Global Footprint Network Asia regional director, asserts while reflecting on the Philippines' Typhoon Haiyan. She emphasizes that the state of California can continue to effect positive change as a leader in climate protection and adaptation.

Is America on its way to becoming a boiled frog? The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep up on you a bit at a time. And right now, both the economic and the environmental frogs are sitting still while the water gets hotter.

Uganda will lose its entire forest cover in the next 50 years if the government does not embark on immediate efforts to halt rapid deforestation. Forests and tree planting can help mitigate the effects of global warming by increasing carbon storage and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Well, another Earth Day has come and gone. And amid all the articles and blogs, symposia and TV specials about all the things we can do to save the planet, once again it was hard to find any substantive discussion of the single biggest threat to the environment. Namely, the staggering rise in global population.

What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

It takes roughly 20 gallons of water to make a pint of beer, as much as 132 gallons of water to make a 2-liter bottle of soda, and about 500 gallons, including water used to grow, dye and process the cotton, to make a pair of Levi's stonewashed jeans. Taking a cue from carbon tracking, companies and conservationists tally hidden sources of consumption...

In the wake of the deepening economic crisis, many commentators are warning of the demise of corporate sustainability, the practice of balancing profit with the social and environmental impact of doing business. Companies obsessed with their own short-term survival, they suggest, cannot possibly support long-term, “feel-good” initiatives to protect the environment or invest in community development...